1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to toner bottles for supplying toners to electrophotographic image forming apparatuses such as copiers, facsimiles, and printers, processes for producing the toner bottles, toner containers comprising the toner bottle and a cap, toner cartridges comprising the toner container and a toner, image forming apparatuses equipped with the toner cartridge, and image forming processes. In the present invention, the term “toner” as used is meant broader sense and the meaning extends to developers utilized commercially.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional electrophotographic image forming apparatuses, developers are supplied in a way that a container containing a developer is horizontally mounted to a main body of image forming apparatuses in an attachable and detachable manner, then the container is rotated around the axis of the container.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) Nos. 60-146265 and 9-311535 disclose, in such devices for supplying a developer or container for supplying a developer, a gear for driving rotatably a cylindrical container or a driven gear that is mounted concentrically to a body of a developer container. These containers for supplying a developer are constructed such that an aperture for supplying a developer is formed at one end of a cylindrical container main body having a bottom, and that helical concave portions are formed along the axis; the toner is guided and conveyed by the helical concave portions by rotating the container main body around the axis while maintaining the axis in an approximately horizontal direction; thereby the toner is supplied to the developing portion through the supplying aperture of image forming apparatuses.
Specifically, as described in JP-A No. 60-146265, a toner cartridge of a toner supplying device is constructed as shown in FIG. 8, for example; reference number 80 in FIG. 8 denotes a toner cartridge, 81 denotes the aperture for supplying a toner, 82 denotes a helical rib, 83 denotes a ring gear as a driven gear for rotating toner cartridge 80, and 84 denotes the helical concave portion formed by helical rib 82 for conveying the toner.
Further, the device for supplying a developer described in JP-A No. 9-311535 is so constructed that the residual toner amount that deposits on inner surface of toner containers may be minimized. As shown in FIG. 9, ring gear 95 is provided at the side of outlet aperture 92 of toner bottle 91 as a driven gear, the gear 95 is engaged with driving gear 97 of which the teeth are partly eliminated intentionally; intermittent rotating motion of toner bottle 91 may cause vibration to the toner bottle. In FIG. 9, reference number 93 denotes the axis of the toner bottle, 94 denotes a helical guiding protection for the inner face that forms helical concave 94a for conveying toner, 96 denotes a driving motor, and T denotes a toner.
However, developer supplying containers in the prior art such as toner cartridge 80 shown in FIG. 8 and the toner bottle shown in FIG. 9 are is each equipped with a driven gear of which the tip circle diameter or outside diameter of the gear is larger than the diameter of the bottle body, and constructed such that the driven gear is disposed concentric with the bottle body. Therefore, the outer periphery of driven gears extends outward from the outer face of bottle bodies, thus, the teeth often suffer from damages at handling containers such as packaging and transporting. In order to avoid such a problem, the developer supplying containers should be packaged and transported along with a specific cushioning material.
Typically, the conventional developer supplying containers are molded products of plastics. These molded products are typically produced by a direct blow molding method. Alternatively, these are produced primarily by injection molding, then the resulting primary body is inserted into a specific mold and subjected to biaxial stretching blow molding under certain conditions. However, since the intended shape is that a ring gear is provided on the outer side where a helical concave is formed on a container body, the mold construction of the injection molding or the biaxial stretching blow molding is considerably complicated; in addition, since the ring gear is disposed at the thinner portion of the bottle body, there exist some problems that the rib construction is likely to be complicated, and the thickness of the bottle body should be increased.